ans had sunk the _Lusitania_.
On the 7th of May, 1915, at two in the afternoon, the pride of the
British merchant marine was struck by two torpedoes fired from a German
submarine. She sank in half an hour. More than eleven hundred of her
passengers and crew were drowned, among them one hundred and twenty-four
Americans, men, women, and children.

The cry that went up from America was one of anguish, but still more one
of rage. This attack upon non-combatant travelers, citizens of a neutral
state, had been callously premeditated and ruthlessly executed in cold
blood. The German Government had given frigid warning, in a newspaper
advertisement, of its intention to affront the custom of nations and the
laws of humanity. A wave of the bitterest anti-German feeling swept down
the Atlantic coast and out to the Mississippi; for the first time there
became apparent a definite trend of opinion demanding the entrance of the
United States into the war on the side of the Entente. On that day Wilson
might have won a declaration of war, so strong was popular sentiment; and
despite the comparative indifference of the Missouri valley and the Far
West, he might have aroused enthusiasm if not unity.

But a declaration of war then would, in all probability, have been a
mistake. Entrance into the war at that time would have been based upon
neither judgment nor ideals, but merely upon emotion. The American people
were in no way prepared to bring material aid to the cause of justice,
nor did the nation yet appreciate the moral issues involved. It would
have been a war of revenge for American lives lost. The President was by
temperament disinclined to listen to the passionate demands for
intervention, and, as historian, he must have had in mind the error
committed by McKinley when he permitted the declaration of war on Spain,
after the sinking of the _Maine_ in 1898. Sober afterthought has
generally agreed that Wilson was right. But he was himself led into a
serious error that produced consequences which were not soon to be
dissipated. Speaking three days after the event, when the world looked to
him to express the soul of America, and dealing with the spirit of
Americanism, he permitted an unfortunate phrase to enter his address and
to cloud his purpose. "There is such a thing," he said, "as a man being
too proud to fight." The phrase was by no means essential to the main
points of his address; it was preceded by one of greater importance,